ORLAPUBS P. L56: Translating tenses, modes, & diatheses

NB: This page of earlier date is now replaced by L108;
it is being retained here in the interest of future research

     The issue of what a literal translation is comes up often enough. I will speak of the matter in connection with the verb categories mentioned in the title of this page--first generally and then (in the second part) addressing specific problems having to do with translating a couple of passages from New Testament Greek into English--of which one occasioned exchanges over what a literal translation really is.
     How are verb and other categories translated in what approximates a literal translation? The answer is: not literally, or gobbledygook will result--and that is not a translation, literal or otherwise.   Why is that so? Because the lines dividing the categories of, say, English or French verbs, do not correspond to in any close manner to those dividing the categories of verbs in, say, Russian, Malay, Marshallese, Japanese, or ancient Greek or Latin. One must, as one correspondent said, select "the proper English [verb category] to capture the sense of the . . . original."
     Perhaps I may be allowed to refer to my Oxford University Press volume, Essays on time-based linguistic analysis (1996), pp. ..... Consider the following:

     What are called "tenses" or "modes" do not coincide in different languages.

1) English is the only language that has got to--or, in most cases, is even able to--distinguish present time from exochronosity--"timelessness":

               She is good : She is being good.
       Cf.   He comes from Honolulu but he's coming from Hilo.
               She speaks Spanish but she is speaking English.

The last two examples would be contradictory in most languages; different lexical items would have to be used to convey the literal sense. In English, only cognitive, perceptual, and copular verbs have the exochronous form as the unmarked (default) alternative; "He's seeming to know the answer" is marked and invites a special interpretation--as does "She's hearing noises in her head."

Since the exochronous modality is outside of time, it can be used for past events under some conditions. More often, it is heard in timeless expressions like "In act three, Hamlet meets Ophelia" or "St. Paul says that . . . " The exochronous modality is used in so-called performatives like "I name this ship Zacq." Aside from those and similar usages, one should take notice of the fact that the exochronous is replacing the former subjunctive (which modern English has of course lost); see HERE and cf. HERE.

2) Greek and Latin have a perfective/completive tense, but French and English have a present-anterior modality. "He's done that (been doing that) for years and still is doing it" would not be a perfect in Greek, since what is spoken of is not finished (perfectum). Preteritives in Greek like oIda and in Latin like novi and odi really mean "have come to know" and "have come to hate." Parallels can be found in Germanic verbs.

As shown in the book cited earlier, the exochronous, anterior, and posterior modalities of English are marked; like negation and true inter- rogation cause reversals, viz. of be gonna and will and also of the passive auxiliaries--be and get.

3) The imperfect of the Classical languages would be used in places where it is ruled out in the Romance languages--equivalent to English "Troy used to stand 600 years" and "Troy was standing 600 years." These become acceptable English and in their French, Spanish, and other Romance equivalents if a local dixis (e.g. "there") is added. Grammars that speak of a "continuous" past in English don't realize how inapplicable that term is.

4) The English contraponent diathesis in "That book translated easily" has to be rendered into other languages as a reflexive (middle) or passive. Conversely, Latin deponents come into English as actives.

I won't add a lot of examples, as the above show that the Greek aorist, imperfect, perfect, and deponent diathesis have no one-to-one correspondence with English categories that are similar to them in certain respects.

But consider:

       "I have begun it four hours earlier" is not English.
       "Whenever they arrive at supper-time, I have always begun it four
                hours earlier" is proper English..

The second sentence of the foregoing pair is acceptable because it is an exochronous-anterior, not a present-anterior--which would be found in the first of the two examples, if it were real English.

John 8:58 offers an example of translating verb categories. The 1611 English version reads nonsense:

         "Before Abraham was, I am."

--which is very un-English. In the first part, Greek has prìn Avraàm yenésthai ["to become, exist"]--rather like English "before Abraham['s coming] to be." Greek eimi "I am" has reference to Exod. 3:14, where we find in Greek: egw eimi o WN "I am the being One]"--"I'm the One Who is" in good English-- for what in Hebrew reads: ?éheh ?shér ?éheh "I am Who [I] am."
     What the passage really means is obviously: "Prior to Abraham's existence, I existed (and always have existed--I'm the One Who [really] IS)." One might render the passage: "My existence antedates Abraham's."

Matthew 1:25 presents a similar problem; specifically, what does (h)éws "until" mean? Before proceeding, reference should be made to the incredibly symmetrical reversals of "until" and "by" under negation analysed in the author's Essays on time-based linguistic analysis (Oxford University Press, pp. 187-191. When you hear a German or a Greek say, "I will begin it until five o'clock," you will recognize something of the problem.
The possibilities for Mat. 1:25 are:

The traditional understanding: "And he had not [not only imperfect in Greek; the verb even has the durative -sk- formative] known her by the time she gave birth to [her] Son."

As one whose native language was German, Luther of course understood "Und er erkannte sie nicht, bis sie ihren ersten Sohn gebar . . ."And he did not know her prior to the time she bore [her] Son"--with very different connotations.

To conclude, there is no good reason to deny the characterization "literal" to translations that use verb categories that semantically and systematically, if not formally, correspond in the languages concerned. Likewise, translating a single word in one language (e.g. [h]éws) in different contexts (e.g. negation) with different words in the target language is so cotidian as hardly to raise an eyebrow. One must not forget that the object of translating is getting meanings across with as little interference (the sort of chaff that very free translations make use of ) as possible. A good literal translations allows a person familiar with both languages to make a good guess as to how the source language has been worded.